


No Survivors

by VinylMockery



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodyguard Romance, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26155462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinylMockery/pseuds/VinylMockery
Summary: It's October 2287, in the Commonwealth wasteland surrounding the Boston metropolitan area, and the cryogenic chambers deep within Vault 111 are humming along without a care; their inhabitants are blissfully unaware of the events unfolding in the post-apocalyptic wastes above.But those events are still unfolding, and the people of the wasteland are there to take part. Preston Garvey and the Quincy survivors are trapped in the Museum of Freedom under heavy raider fire. Robert Joseph MacCready is hot on the trail of a group of people that his sources say escaped the clutches of his former employers. If he can catch up to them before they get caught by Gunner mercenaries, he may be able to find someone to help him out from under their heel. Will the Last Minuteman be able to convince the Man who Played Soldier to join their cause?
Relationships: Preston Garvey/Robert Joseph MacCready
Kudos: 3





	No Survivors

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone,  
> My apologies for not including any author notes during the original upload; it was going on 5am and I just wanted it to be online. Welcome to my first fic! (Well, not counting my Gary Stu self-insert Harvest Moon crackfic on ff.net 15+ years ago.) I'm leaning kind of heavily on actual game dialogue here at the start, to keep things grounded so it feels authentic, but I promise as things develop you'll see more original dialogue. This is a work in progress, and will likely be pretty long by the time I get through all of Far Harbor, so please feel free to offer feedback as I go. I'm fairly new to this, so I don't necessarily know what things people want to see just yet, and am still honing my craft. Please enjoy!

* * *

_Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide Catalogue No. 9521_

_Rifles are generally long, of average size, and require two hands to fire. They include, but are not limited to, the assault rifle, combat rifle, combat shotgun, double-barrel shotgun, hunting rifle, laser musket and submachine gun._

* * *

“ _Fudge_. Darn it all to _heck_ ,” Robert Joseph MacCready muttered to himself as he rounded the bend and came up on the eastern side of the ruined city of Concord. He could hear gunfire and the telltale “ _fwoom_ ” of laser blasts from up ahead.

“Sounds like Winlock’s intel was right, after all.” Gunner intelligence usually was, even if the Gunner who let it slip after three drinks at The Third Rail didn’t have any intelligence himself.

So there _were_ survivors from the Quincy Massacre, and they had made it clear to the other side of the Commonwealth. MacCready smiled. Anyone who could slip past Sergeant Baker and survive a thirty-mile trek through feral ghouls, super mutants, rogue robots, and deranged raiders was someone MacCready wanted to grab a beer with.

He stopped and dropped to one knee in front of the porch of a long-abandoned house which afforded him a clear line of sight down the street, sweeping the tails of his torn and dirty tan duster behind him. He licked his fingers and felt the air for a moment before unholstering his rifle. The westward breeze probably wouldn’t interfere with his shooting. Perfect. He readied his rifle and laid prone, propping himself up on his left arm, and pressed a pale blue eye up to the scope. He saw a three-story, brick building; it was probably old even before the Great War over two hundred years ago. A man on the balcony brandished what looked like a heavily modified laser rifle at a crowd of leather-clad, slobbering malcontents. It looked as though raiders had managed to corner the survivors and trap them inside.

MacCready looked again at the man on the balcony. He could make out dark skin under a wide-brimmed leather hat, with a long, cream-colored duster that appeared to be in much better shape than his own. It still had both its sleeves, at least. More interesting, though, was the cornered man’s posture: confident, resolute, calculating. This man clearly had military training of some kind. He wasn’t a Gunner, he definitely wasn’t with the Brotherhood of Steel, and he didn’t look to be Enclave, but—

MacCready’s attention was interrupted by the loud whooping of a charging raider who, as MacCready now focused on him through the scope, appeared to be running headlong towards the front door of the building and holding a molotov cocktail. MacCready focused on the grenade, held his breath, and pulled the trigger. There was an immediate CRACK as he fired a .308 round down the street, followed by the sound of glass shattering, and finally a fiery roar and a panicked scream as the raider found himself covered in volatile, flaming liquid and shards of broken glass.

The man on the balcony whipped his head to his right, towards the source of the shot. MacCready pulled back the bolt on his rifle, releasing the spent casing with a soft _clang_ on the pavement. _CH-click._ He pushed the bolt back, racking another round in the chamber, and waved at the man on the balcony as a way to say “I’m here to help.” The man on the balcony gestured for MacCready to follow him, mouthed something MacCready couldn’t quite make out, and then ducked inside the building, narrowly missing a burst of raider gunfire.

MacCready peered through his scope to ready another shot, just in time to see a half-dozen frenzied raiders round the corner and come tearing down the street towards him.

“Well, _shoot_ ,” he said, taking his finger off the trigger and rising to a crouch. While the odds were good that none of the raiders’ weapons could match his for range, raiders were well known for spraying a _lot_ of bullets, and there was always a chance that one of their stray shots might get lucky. He leapt to his left, into the street, and turned his dive into a roll so that he wound up in the bushes in front of the house across the street. Hopefully the foliage would provide him enough cover to buy him a few precious seconds…

As MacCready scouted up the road through his scope, a metallic glint caught his eye. An old Corvega Highwayman was still parked in the driveway of its long-dead owner’s house. MacCready might never forgive the people who plunged the world into global thermonuclear war, but he had to admit that they built things to _last_. A car in that condition probably still had a decent payload of uranium in its “genuine atomic engine,” but most of its coolant had probably dried up. Perfect.

As the horde of raiders sprinted down the street, MacCready unloaded a shot into the side of the Highwayman’s engine block. The CRACK of his rifle was followed by a hiss and a sudden _fwoosh_ as flames erupted from the hood of the car. With a satisfying _chi-click_ , MacCready loaded the next round. The raiders continued their charge, seemingly emboldened by what they probably thought was just piss-poor aim.

“It doesn’t count if I don’t say it out loud,” MacCready muttered.

CRACK. _Fwoosh_. _Chi-click_. Another round in the engine and another shell in the brush. The flames on the Corvega’s engine block burned even brighter. The raiders were getting closer. Any moment and they would pass in front of—

CRACK. For a moment, the world went white. A deafening explosion shook the street, and a high-pitched tone rang in MacCready’s ears. As reality faded back into view, he saw the drifting plume of a mushroom cloud, nearly twenty feet tall, rising from the burnt-out frame of what was once a Corvega Highwayman. The charred, crackling bodies of the attacking raiders lay smoldering in the street. MacCready rose to his feet, removed his faded viridian-green utility cover, and wiped the sweat from his brow. For a moment, the street fell silent.

As MacCready headed up the street, he took note of the carnage on the pavement around him. In addition to the raiders, there were the bodies of two people with matching hats and identical weapons—wide-brimmed leather hats and heavily-modified laser rifles, respectively. He bent down to pick up one of the rifles, and pocketed a few energy cells. The rifle had a crank mechanism near the stock. He gave it a turn and the rifle roared to life, red energy visibly crackling in its chamber.

“Well that’s different,” MacCready remarked. He stood between the two alabaster columns and looked at the placard mounted over the white double-doors.

“The Museum of Freedom,” it read. He opened the door.

* * *

_Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide Catalogue No. 9693_

_The laser musket combines high-tech energy damage with Revolutionary style. Each crank of its handle loads additional fusion cell ammo, and the weapon can be cranked multiple times to increase the damage of a single shot._

* * *

MacCready had expected the inside of the Museum of Freedom to be dark and musty, so he was caught off-guard by the sunlight glaring down from the skylights, shattered by a vertibird that crashed into the roof who knows how long ago. MacCready could see one of its twin propellers and part of a wing jutting into the museum from above. The center of this three-story building was an open space, ringed by deteriorating balconies on the upper floors, and adorned with banners glorifying the might of the American military from before the Great War. MacCready felt a sharp pang of disgust—did these ignorant fucks really think that the wars that lead to the end of the world were worth celebrating?

“That didn’t count either,” he muttered, but he was less concerned about his swearing and more concerned about the bullets flying past him. Ahead of him was a dilapidated wall with grated windows and large metal gate, and a mural depicting soldiers marching behind British and American flags. Atop this wall was a walkway connecting the east and west balconies, and on this walkway was a raider, crouched behind boxes and taking shots at MacCready from his right. To the left, another raider stood on an outcropping of collapsed walkway on the third floor. A bullet whizzed past MacCready’s right ear, shaving his light-brown hair a little closer to his scalp.

He sprinted up the half-flight of stairs connecting the entryway to the rest of the building, sheltering behind a wooden pillar that had snapped in half from exposure to the elements and, presumably, the occasional shootout. “Time to see what this thing can do!”

He peered down the barrel of the laser musket he had picked up outside and aimed it at the shoulder of a raider upstairs that was poking out from behind a stack of wooden boxes. He pulled the trigger. _Fwang!_ A beam of intense red light shot out from the musket and seared the flesh of the raider above. The raider sprang backwards, jumping to his feet. “Ow, fuck! My arm! You’ll pay for that!”

The raider pointed his homemade handgun at MacCready and squeezed the trigger. _Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!_ Bullets planted themselves in the rotting wood around MacCready, but between the gun’s craftsmanship and the burlap sack with holes in it that the raider wore as a mask, none of the bullets were making it to their target. MacCready turned the crank on his laser gun twice, filling the chamber with an intense red glow. _Fwang!_ The hail of bullets around MacCready stopped, and the raider’s threats fell silent. The smell of singed hair and burnt flesh wafted through the stagnant air of the museum as the raider fell limp, a charred hole in his chest where a heart should be.

 _Vrrrm, vrrm_ , the musket whirred as MacCready cranked it again. A warning shot splintered the wooden floor at MacCready’s feet, but the raider on the third floor couldn’t get a shot on MacCready in his current hiding place. “Only fucking _cowards_ hide!” the raider taunted, and there were certainly times when MacCready would have agreed with him. Right now, however, MacCready needed to move—from this position, he wouldn’t be able to shoot the loudmouth and shut him up for good.

MacCready tensed, then sprinted across the room to the set of pillars which mirrored his current cover. He heard a rip as a gunshot tore through his duster as it trailed behind him. He pressed his back up against the far side of this new pillar, took a breath, and leaned out. _Fwang._ A stream of obscenities followed from the raider above as MacCready took cover again. _Vrrrm, vrrm._ “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” he teased, before leaning out once more. _Fwang_. The obscenities and accompanying gunfire stopped as the raider hit the wood with a soft thud.

MacCready dashed towards the large metal gate in the center of the room. On the other side, he could see a grand staircase leading to the upper floors—his ticket to the third floor and the trapped survivors. He grasped the door and pulled—nothing. He weighed his options. With enough time and enough bobby pins, he could probably pick the lock pretty easily. His decision was made for him, though, by the _pwing_ of bullets ricocheting off the metal bars. A raider wearing a dark green hood with some sort of breathing apparatus was on the other side of the room, shooting at MacCready from the base of the stairs.

 _Pop!_ A searing pain shot through MacCready’s left shoulder. One of the raider’s bullets had finally found its mark. MacCready groaned and bit his tongue. _Goddammit,_ he thought silently, biting his tongue until he could almost taste blood. He sprinted towards an open door on the right of the room, away from the masked raider and into a dimly-lit hallway lined with brick walls and fake windows. As he passed a torn poster of a chopped-up snake, a voice shouted out, startling him.

“No more British occupation!” it said. “Join or die!”

“Gee whiz,” MacCready sighed. He must have triggered some sort of pre-war recording when he entered the hall. He reached into the pale blue canvas pouch he had sewn into the right leg of his fatigues. He extracted a syringe full of red fluid, on which was mounted a pressure gauge with yellow wires running to the sides of the barrel. Wincing slightly, he jammed the needle of the syringe into his left arm just below the bullet wound. Immediately, the pressure gauge began to decrease as the autoinjector pumped a mixture of medications and stimulants into MacCready’s body. Almost instantly, the flesh around his wound began to stitch itself back together, and the bleeding stopped.

“Okay,” he conceded, “Maybe those folks before the war got a thing or two right.” He could still feel the bullet inside him as he moved his arm, but he could probably swing by Diamond City and have Doctor Sun dig it out later. Maybe he would get lucky and run into Doc Anderson’s caravan on the road. That was a problem for another day. He rounded the corner into the next room, and his heart nearly lept out of his chest.

A dozen people stood in the dimly-lit room. MacCready could make out at least five rifles among them, each with a bayonet. The figures seemed to be in two groups, facing each other. Was there infighting among the raiders?

“Back to England with you!” the recorded voice cajoled. “You lobster-backed knaves!”

Mannequins. MacCready had entered a room full of mannequins, as part of some kind of museum display. Who’s twisted idea was this? He was ready to take everything back about people before the war being competent.

“Boston belongs to America!” cried the recording, the voice of some long-dead idiot talking to no one. MacCready plodded through two more rooms of crumbling exhibits and pre-recorded messages before coming out into the main room on the other side of the gate. The green-hooded raider stood with his back to MacCready, peering through one of the grated windows in what must have been a ticket booth, probably hoping to take another shot at him. _Vrrrm, vrrm, fwang_. There was a flash of red light and a smoldering hole appeared in the back of the raider’s hood, dropping him like a sack of mutfruit. MacCready carefully made his way across a collapsed section of floor, which now provided a straight path from the grand staircase to a fusion generator in the basement. Prime pickings for scavengers, but these raiders left it untouched. What were they after?

MacCready took the staircase up and to his left while he pondered the question. These weren’t Gunners, so it wasn’t a matter of finishing the job they started in Quincy. And if they weren’t after loot, it wasn’t just a matter of the survivors being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No, these raiders had come for the survivors _specifically._ But why? Were these people loaded? Do they have so many caps that the raiders can afford to leave fusion cores behind and keep pursuing even after so many of their own have been killed?

MacCready heard voices up ahead to his right, in one of the rooms branching off from the main balcony. Dim light poured out of an open door ahead, and he slowly crept inside, cranking the laser musket as he went. Ahead of him was another mural, this time of men with guns and American flags standing triumphantly against a backdrop of a sunset and explosions. As he approached, he could begin to make out the conversation between the two men in the next room.

“I’m telling you, man,” said a nervous voice, “Let’s just get the hell out of here. We got no reason to hang around and get shot.”

“Stop being such a fucking pansy,” replied another voice, angrily. “We hold out for the others. Like we’re supposed to.”

“What are you, deaf?” countered the first voice. “Somebody’s out there, shooting the place up! I ain’t sitting around, waiting to die!”

“I swear to God, you make a fucking move for that exit, and I’ll gut you myself.”

MacCready had heard enough. Clearly they weren’t holding out for unimaginable riches, but they also weren’t going to surrender. There were only two ways this would end: either they died, or he did. As he inched his way down the hallway, the two bickering men came into view: one wearing little more than underwear and duct tape, playing with a switchblade, and another wearing a sack hood and a chestpiece cobbled together from rusty pipes.

“What the hell?” said the angrier voice. Suddenly the pipe-clad raider turned toward MacCready, raising a shotgun, and MacCready realized too late that the laser musket was casting an unearthly red glow on the walls of the room. So much for stealth. _Fwang._ MacCready rose to his feet as the armored raider collapsed, a fresh hole burned through the front of his sack hood, the back of his sack hood, and everything in between.

“Damn you!” cried the remaining raider, all traces of nervousness gone. He charged MacCready with his knife. MacCready took a step back, letting the raider pass him and putting the raider off balance. He raised his arms and brought the butt of the musket’s stock down on the back of the raider’s head, knocking him to the floor. _Vrrrm, vrrm, fwang_. MacCready turned and saw the rest of the mural—images of astronauts with guns fighting on the surface of the moon and soldiers in power armor marching in Anchorage—as well as a massive hole blown in the brick wall on the other side of the room. A whole museum dedicated to celebrating violence, blown to bits by still more violence.

He poked his head through the hole and found a maintenance hallway. One end was occupied by a large piece of rusted-out, defunct machinery, but the other end opened into another hallway. As he crossed the threshold between the two hallways, he saw a staircase leading to the third floor. With a little luck, he would make it in time to help the survivors. Rounding the corner on the stairs’ landing, he heard a voice calling from the other side of the wall.

“I’m coming in there, and I’m gonna skin every last one of you!”

That was a bad sign. MacCready quickened his pace.

He came up the stairs to find an empty Nuka-Cola machine and a door open to his right. That should put him directly behind whoever was threatening the people trapped inside. _Vrrrm, vrrm._ He backed up against the door and took a deep breath before crossing the threshold and confronting the source of the voice.

Two raiders stood between him and a locked door—one decked head-to-toe in leather and the other barely covered above the waist by some sort of harness. The leather-clad raider charged MacCready with a rusted tire iron, and MacCready pulled the trigger. _Fwang._ The raider was momentarily stunned, but continued his advance, his leather jacket barely singed.

 _Damned leather absorbs energy shots,_ MacCready reminded himself silently. He dropped the laser musket to the floor, pulled his sniper rifle from the sling on his back, and took off the safety. By now the raider in leather was close enough that MacCready barely had to aim. He shot from the hip and sank a .308 round in the raider’s gut.

“Fuck you,” the raider spat as he collapsed to his knees, dropping the tire iron and clasping his bleeding gut. _Chi-click_. CRACK.

With his partner out of the way, the remaining raider now had a clear shot at MacCready. _Pop! Pop! Pop!_ Shots from the raider’s handmade pistol careened around MacCready, shattering burnt-out bulbs in rusty light fixtures and putting new holes in centuries-old paint. MacCready pressed his back against a pillar for cover while he reloaded. _Chi-click._ He whipped out from around the pillar and fired a shot.

CRACK. _Pop!_ MacCready’s shot plastered raider brains on the locked door ahead at the same time that the raider’s shot grazed MacCready’s thigh, drawing blood but not lodging into his flesh. MacCready groaned. “Not worth stimpak,” he assured himself, and he limped towards the door. The door swung open, bathing the balcony in golden light.

“Come on,” urged a voice. “Inside!”

* * *

_Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide Catalogue No. 4235_

_The Minutemen first rose to prominence in the year 2180, when they defended Diamond City against a horde of Super Mutant attackers._

* * *

MacCready followed the sound of the voice that called out to him, and closed the door behind him. There were five people gathered in some sort of office. A man with pale skin and slick black hair combed into a pouf stood in blue utility overalls, plucking away at a computer terminal. On a couch in the middle of the room sat an older woman, also pale, white hair poking out from under a blue knit cap. She seemed eerily calm, quietly staring into space in her worn blue cardigan and tattered red scarf. At the far end of the room, a furious-looking woman with shoulder-length straight black hair paced back and forth with her arms crossed. Her brown flannel shirt looked like it might have been any other color a few weeks ago. It must have been a long road from Quincy. Beside her, sitting on the floor with his head on his knees, was a man in jeans and a t-shirt with a scraggly black mess of hair. He rocked back and forth, visibly panicked.

Directly in front of MacCready stood the dark-skinned man he had seen shooting lasers at the raiders outside. He was also the source of the voice which urged MacCready to come in. As MacCready got a better look at him, he noticed more details that he missed earlier. Underneath the man’s tan duster, he wore a green scarf and a long, navy-blue vest with gold filigree. He stood with his rifle as though it was an extension of his arm, and had a radio attached to a belt strapped across his chest. The wide brim of his hat was turned up on one side, and the light in the room made the dark skin of his cheeks glow with a comforting light. A scar ran down his left cheek, all the way from his brow to his chin. His deep, brown eyes seemed to be taking inventory of MacCready as well.

MacCready became acutely aware of how ramshackle he must look. His goatee was unkempt, and it never really came in as dark as the rest of his hair, but without it he still looked like the fresh-faced kid that got exiled from Little Lamplight on his sixteenth birthday. No mungos, no exceptions. Not even for the Mayor. He was certain he had bags under his eyes, his clothes were beat to hell, and they had at least three new bullet holes just from today. He found himself blushing, slightly embarrassed at being scrutinized by those warm, earthy eyes.

“You alright there, friend?” the man inquired, his voice smooth and reassuring. “Your face is red, and your leg is bleeding.”

“Hm?” MacCready’s thoughts returned to the situation at hand. “Oh, uh, yeah,” he stammered, “It was a bit of a tussle getting up here. I’ll be fine.”

The man seemed to accept this answer, though MacCready could swear he saw the faintest of smirks, as though he knew exactly why MacCready was blushing, but was too polite to say. Maybe he imagined it. Stimpaks always made him a little jittery.

“Man, I don't know who you are, but your timing’s impeccable,” the man remarked. “Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen.”

“Minutemen? I thought they were history,” MacCready replied.

“Protect the people at a minute's notice,” Preston recalled sadly. “That was the idea. So I joined up, wanted to make a difference. And I did, but...”

Preston trailed off, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. “Things fell apart,” he continued. “Now it looks like I'm the last Minuteman left standing.” MacCready could hear the weight of the responsibility in Preston’s voice.

That explained his military posture and composure, MacCready realized. The Minutemen were a volunteer militia that was dedicated to protecting the people of the Commonwealth. Heck, they even held off a super mutant siege on Diamond City back in 2180—and it was a big enough deal that MacCready had heard about it when he first came to the Commonwealth from the Capital last year, over a hundred years after the fact. The Minutemen were a big deal until recently, when the people of the Commonwealth started to lose faith in them. The Minutemen had fallen to infighting, and the word on the street was that some Minutemen had defected to the Gunners or even turned to raiding.

“Who are these people?” MacCready asked, hoping for some insight as to what made these people more important than any of the loot left in this building.

“Just folks looking for a new home,” Preston replied. “A fresh start. I've been with 'em since Quincy. Lexington looked good for a while, but the ghouls drove us outta there.”

MacCready was forcibly reminded of the night, just a few years ago, in that metro station...

“A month ago, there were twenty of us,” Preston continued. “Yesterday, there were eight. Now we’re five. It’s just me, the Longs—Marcy and Jun,” he gestured towards the woman pacing and the man rocking on the other side of the room. “That’s old Mama Murphy on the couch. And this here’s Sturges.”

“Hey,” responded the man in overalls, not looking up from the console he was furiously typing on. Line after line of green text scrolled up the screen. “Huh, no, that ain’t it,” Sturges muttered, clearly distracted by whatever the screen was telling him. MacCready had never gotten the hang of those things.

MacCready mustered all his sympathy. He knew all too well the horrors of losing the people you’ve promised to protect to the horrors of the wasteland. His hand instinctively went to cover the wooden figure in his breast pocket.

“That’s rough, buddy,” he finally replied.

“Thanks,” Preston responded. He seemed a little choked up. “It's good to meet someone who really cares.” He regained his composure. “Anyway, we figured Concord would be a safe place to settle. Those raiders proved us wrong, but…” Preston sighed. “Well, we do have one idea.”

MacCready looked again at the survivors. A sad excuse for a platoon, if the plan was to fight. “It had better be a good one,” he said.

“Sturges? Tell him.”

The man in overalls stood up from his position hunched over the terminal and turned around, crossing his arms in front of him.

“There’s a crashed vertibird, up on the roof,” he began. “Old-school. Pre-war. You might have seen it.”

MacCready nodded.

“Well,” Sturges continued, “Looks like one of its passengers left behind a seriously sweet goody. We’re talking a full suit of cherry T-45 power armor. Military issue.”

MacCready whistled appreciatively. That sort of firepower could definitely turn the tide. “I like it,” he remarked, hoping there was more to it.

Sturges chuckled.

“Yeah, I thought you might,” he continued. “Protection with an added bonus: get the suit, and you can rip the minigun right off the vertibird. Do that, and those raiders get an express ticket to hell. You dig?”

“Huh,” MacCready answered, thinking. “That might actually be crazy enough to work.”

“It’ll work,” Sturges reassured him. “Provided we can reactivate the suit. It’s totally out of juice. Probably has been for a hundred years. It can be powered up again, but…” He gestured to the group gathered in the room. “We’re a bit stuck.”

MacCready had been around the block enough times to see where this was headed. He had already risked life and limb to get here, and here they were looking to get more from him. The wasteland was a cruel place, and there was no room in it to count on the kindness of strangers. Not the Minutemen, and certainly not MacCready.

“The answer’s ‘no,’” he stated firmly. “I’m out.”

“Just like that, huh?” Preston erupted. “You come this far, then condemn these poor people to die?” His voice dripped with venom; MacCready had clearly struck a nerve. “All right. Have it your way,” he continued coldly. “Stay safe—maybe at least one of us will survive this.”

MacCready was taken aback by the sudden shift in Preston’s demeanor.

“Look, pal,” MacCready said defensively, “If you’re looking for a friend, you've got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun,” he shifted his weight, cradling his rifle in his arms, “then maybe we can talk.”

“Changed your mind, tough guy?” Preston stepped closer, bringing his face inches from MacCready’s. His eyes bored into MacCready’s own, searching. “You gonna help us get that fusion core?”

MacCready stepped back, trying to maintain his composure. “That depends,” he answered coyly. “Tell you what,” he offered, “Price is 250 caps. Up front. Non-negotiable.”

“Everything’s negotiable,” Preston countered sternly. “How about a hundred?”

 _The stones on this guy,_ MacCready thought to himself. He sighed.

“Well, I’m not making more than that standing around this dump. You’ve got a deal.”

“Hmph,” Preston grunted, clearly irritated. “Spoken like a true merc.”

He reached into his duster and produced a small suede pouch which he tossed onto the ancient office desk between him and MacCready. It landed with a hefty clank as several bottlecaps spilled out; MacCready could make out the usual Nuka-Cola caps alongside a few Gwinnet Stouts and a couple of Nuka-Cola Quantums. If there was one good thing to come out of the rampant consumerism and overproduction from before the war, MacCready mused, it was that the tremendous supply of bottled drinks meant that he could always get paid. A hundred caps would be enough to get his wounds treated by a doctor with plenty to spare. Maybe he’d even hit up the Barbovs’s place for drinks after all this was over.

“Alright boss,” MacCready teased, “you’ve got yourself an extra gun.”

“Look,” Preston began, clearly annoyed, “if you can get to the fusion core, jack it into that power armor and grab the minigun.” His voice turned serious, even bitter. “Then those raiders'll know they picked the wrong fight.”

“So kill them all before they kill you first?” MacCready summarized. “I can get behind that.” The ratty tails of his duster swept behind him as he turned to head towards the basement.

“Good luck,” Preston said after him.

* * *

_Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide Catalogue No. 8438_

_Every issue of_ Tumblers Today _you collect slightly increases the "sweet spot" when lockpicking._

* * *

The museum had fallen silent, save for the buzzing of flies that were descending on what remained of the raiders. MacCready’s path back downstairs was unobstructed so long as he avoided the blood puddles and occasional pile of viscera. As he descended the main staircase, the fusion generator came into view behind a heavy, metal door. A huge teal and yellow machine—nearly the size of a Corvega flipped on its side, but shaped like an elongated pear—the generator whirred with a high-pitched hum. A hanging light mounted to its side illuminated the fusion core, which sat in a specially-fitted recess surrounded by a glowing ring. The whole affair was secured in a cage of steel chain-link fence alongside two additional generators that had long since gone dark and silent. On a nearby concrete pillar, the screen of a security terminal glowed in the darkness of the basement.

MacCready steadied himself as he descended the collapsed floor and entered the basement. He reached for the handle of the metal door as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Locked.

“ _Shoot,_ ” he spat. He looked again at the terminal to the right. Neon green letter glowed on a black screen.

“RobCo Industries (™) TermLink Protocol,” the text read, followed by lines and lines of miscellaneous text characters and seemingly random words. MacCready struggled to make heads or tails of it. He sighed.

“Okay, what else…” he trailed off. Deeper into the basement, a red emergency light glowed ominously. As MacCready rounded the corner, heading towards the light, he found a stepladder and toolbox beside several framed paintings that were leaned up against a wall. MacCready shuddered. Imagine minding your business, getting ready to hang up paintings at your stupid job, and finding out the bombs had dropped before you could even finish. How do you even begin to process that? That the world was ending, and you were too busy with your boring job to notice?

MacCready tried his best to shake the ennui and began sifting through the toolbox. Screwdriver might help. Hammer, not so much. Shame there weren’t any explosives…

“Aha!” he cried, extracting a box of bobby pins from the bottom of the box. He had heard about this, in an old issue of _Tumblers Today_. If you did it right, a bobby pin was just as good as a key! Provided, of course, that you knew what you were doing. Which MacCready did not.

“Details, details,” he muttered, returning to the locked door. He pulled a bobby pin from the box, and carefully unfolded it. He worked the straight end of it into the bottom of the keyhole. Next, he placed the tip of the flathead screwdriver into the top of the keyhole, and began to apply pressure with the screwdriver while pressing upwards on the bobby pin. After only a few moments of jiggling—

“Darn,” MacCready said through gritted teeth. The bobby pin had snapped. He carefully pulled the debris from the keyhole and started again with a fresh pin from the box.

After five or six bobby pins, MacCready felt he had a pretty good grasp on what he was doing. Another pin or two, and he’d be in. As he probed inside the keyhole, he could feel pins being pushed upward. As one of the pins reached the edge of the keyhole, the pressure from the screwdriver held it in place. Once it was held, he moved to the next pin. If he could just get all five pins in place…

 _Click_. After what seemed like ages of trial and error, the lock finally gave way. MacCready heaved a sigh of relief. Picking locks wasn’t really his style. He never really had the patience for it that he had when sniping. Whenever possible, he preferred to let others deal with locks and computers. He was much more comfortable hunting moving targets.

The worn metal door swung open with a loud creak. MacCready stepped through, into the light cast by the generator’s lamp. He pressed on the fusion core and twisted it, releasing it from its receptacle. As he removed it, the generator wound down to silence, its lights flickering off and leaving no light except the hellish red glow of the emergency lighting. He made his way back upstairs, to the third floor and the room full of survivors.

Sturges looked up from his terminal when MacCready entered the room. He eyed the thick yellow and silver canister in MacCready’s hand.

“Terminal said the door downstairs was unlocked,” he reported, nodding. “Juice up the suit of power armor, and then you'll be able to heft that minigun. That fusion core will do the job, trust me.”

MacCready walked past Sturges and in front of Preston. The Minuteman huffed and avoided eye contact.

“Change your mind?” he said mockingly. “You gonna grab that minigun? Help us clear out those Raiders?”

“If I'm paid to kill them,” MacCready assured him, “they're going down.”

MacCready kept walking, but was stopped by a frail hand grabbing his coattails.

“You’re a hero, boy,” came the raspy voice of Mama Murphy. “Coming here and helping us.”

“Heroism’s for kids and suckers,” MacCready replied, downcast. Mama Murphy blinked slowly, staring somewhere behind MacCready’s face. She sighed, seemingly puzzled.

“That may be,” she finally conceded. “But pickles like this? You're gonna find yourself in plenty of them. Lots of chances to play hero.”

“Or not,” she added. “Oh, it's true,” she insisted, seeming to sense MacCready’s disbelief. “I saw it.”

“You ‘saw’ it?” MacCready scoffed.

“It's the chems, kid,” she explained. “They give ole Mama Murphy the ‘Sight.’ Been that way for as long as I can remember.”

“Great,” sighed MacCready. “You’re completely nuts.”

The old woman barked out a laugh. “From where you're standing, I would seem crazy. My gift is pretty nuts, that's for sure,” she admitted. “But I can see…”

As she relaxed her grip on his coat, MacCready resumed his pace.

“A bit of what was, and what will be,” the aged prophet continued.

MacCready passed Marcy Long, who fumed at him with her arms crossed. “These are our lives you're playing with,” she accused. “Are you listening to me?”

MacCready kept walking. Mama Murhphy’s voice grew more urgent as he passed the silent Jun Long, rocking on the floor. “And even what is,” she droned, “right now.”

MacCready walked out onto the balcony ringing the west side of the atrium, but he heard Mama Murphy’s words just as clearly as if she were right beside him.

“And right now I can see there's something coming.”

He clambered over piles of debris, making his way to the rooftop access.

“Drawn by the noise, and the chaos.”

He found the door marked ‘EXIT.’ He couldn’t tell if her voice was coming from across the museum or from in his own head.

“And it is…”

MacCready pressed his hand onto the exit door’s panic bar, and heard a loud _click_ as Mama Murphy’s words rang in his ear.

“ _Angry_.”

* * *

_Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide Catalogue No. 5864_

_Raiders are the scourge of the Wasteland, in the Commonwealth and everywhere else. Loosely organized, with a power hierarchy based on pure ruthlessness, they will attack anyone at any time... for any reason._

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**Author's Note:**

> Well, there we have it! Thanks for reading! If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions, lay 'em on me! Just knowing there are people reading this is kind of a wild experience for me, so please let me know how you feel. Are the VDSG 'loading screens' distracting? Is the dialogue stale or stilted? Is it not gay enough? (I know this chapter definitely isn't gay enough, but we'll get there, don't worry.) Thanks again, and see you next chapter, when we take on Gristle and the Concord deathclaw, meet Dogmeat, and settle down in Sanctuary!


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